An hour after miscarrying the baby she had newly conceived through IVF, actress Connie Hyde heard a shout as she waited in the blood-tests department of her local hospital. "She's on The Bill, she's on The Bill," a starstruck nurse exclaimed to a colleague, as heads turned across the waiting room.

"Any other time it would have been all right, but then I just wanted to grieve," says Hyde, remembering the incident as one of many searingly painful times during six years of trying for a child.

As a star of a prime-time television series, the 33-year-old actress readily accepts that a certain amount of invaded privacy is the price of fame - she is recognised daily thanks to her role as the manipulative and damaged PC Cathy Bradford - but has never courted publicity and actively shuns a celebrity lifestyle.

Now, though, she is casting aside her carefully nurtured privacy in order to speak about her experiences of fertility problems. Her reasoning is twofold: first, she says, she is anxious to help break the taboo that still surrounds infertility, despite endless statistics showing that one in seven couples will experience fertility difficulties at some point. "I would like to encourage women to talk about it, because so many are ashamed of it and there is nothing to be ashamed of."

Her second motive is to use her fame to explain and help others cope with the harsh reality of fertility treatments: that for many couples, the process is long, harrowing and more likely to fail than succeed.

In the month that the first test-tube baby, Louise Brown, reaches her 25th birthday, statistics published by experts from Leeds University and the Bridge Clinic in London reveal that, despite improving success rates, women still have at best a 24% chance of having a baby through IVF, with that figure down to 20% for those over 35.

Hyde points to a string of celebrities - including actresses Alex Kingston and Emma Thompson and comedian and writer Ben Elton - who have spoken of their experiences of fertility treatment, but have done so after having reached a happy ending in their quest for a child. Accounts of the emotional and physical pain of fertility treatments are often presented in the media with their raw edges softened by accompanying pictures of adoring parents and their much longed-for baby.

"I understand why people won't talk when they are going through this process, and I think it is fantastic that they talk about it at all," says Hyde. "It is so painful to discuss when it has failed, but I think it may actually be more beneficial because so many people share that experience."

Claims last week by scientists that infertility will be treatable for all within a decade also risk holding out false hope, she believes. "I am very cynical about these blanket statements. They say they will ultimately cure cancer - and how wonderful if they can - but who can tell? And the promises over fertility don't help people now."

Hyde's story begins six years ago, when she and her partner Finlo married and stopped using contraception, keen for a baby but in no rush. When, two years later, nothing had happened, they saw their GP, who referred them to a specialist fertility clinic. Further checks followed, but no explanation for the failure to conceive was found.

Next, the couple embarked on a series of fertility treatments, starting with a course of Clomid, a drug that stimulates the ovaries, and, when that failed, artificial insemination, also without success. Doctors continued to insist they could find nothing wrong, so Hyde tried alternative therapies. "I must have spent thousands. I did no-wheat diets, no dairy, no smoking, no alcohol, no tea, no coffee, special vitamins, reflexology, Chinese medicine, homeopathy, even a healer, but none of it worked for me."

While she had initially been relaxed about her failure to get pregnant, the pressure of striving for conception began to tell. "I have never experienced anything more painful because it's there all the time. As soon as you go out into the street you feel you are just looking at pregnant bellies or children. You feel isolated and some sort of freak because everybody else seems to be able to do this except you."

Her situation, and the apparent lack of medical explanation, stirred up powerful feelings. "I got very angry at one point - I would see people out pushing their buggies and smoking over their kids and think, 'Why you and not me?' I would even get jealous of women who had had miscarriages, thinking, 'At least you have been pregnant.' You become completely irrational."

Like all couples with fertility problems, Hyde and her husband had to deal with others' questions and reactions; they found some hard to cope with. "A lot of people like to tell you of someone they know who eventually had a baby, or they say to relax and go on holiday. They often think you are obsessed with babies, or go the other way and think you might somehow want their baby. What you really need is for people to listen and not advise."

While some friendships came under strain, Hyde believes her relationship with her husband has been strengthened by their experience, surviving "the cruelty that makes sex synonymous with failure".

"It makes you or breaks you. I can't imagine a deeper pain, unless a child dies, that a couple can go through. It has brought us together."

After the failure of initial fertility treatments, Hyde and her husband were advised by a specialist to try in-vitro fertilisation (IVF), a suggestion that came as "a complete shock" given their age. But late last year, during a break from filming The Bill, Hyde embarked on the "rollercoaster ride" that is IVF, first taking the drugs that put the body into temporary menopause, then more to stimulate her ovaries, before the removal of eggs through a needle - a memory that still makes her wince.

After fertilisation with her husband's sperm - the "test tube" part of the process - two eggs were placed in her womb. Two weeks later, while she was providing blood for a pregnancy test, a urine test also offered by her London hospital proved negative. Devastated, she spent that weekend in January "eating curry, drinking red wine, all the things I hadn't been able to do", only for the hospital to call to say that the blood test had proved positive, though hormone levels were too low for the pregnancy to be sustained. "You are at a stage where you have been trying for five years, your dream has come true and yet you are just waiting to lose the baby," she says, blinking back tears.

A few days later she suffered a miscarriage, confirmed with a scan and the blood test where she was recognised by the starstruck nurse.

A second IVF attempt from the same batch of eggs also failed this spring. Shortly afterwards, Hyde, an avowed supporter of the NHS, opted to move to the private sector, concerned that, despite high-quality care, the NHS could not offer the time and resources she wanted.

An appointment with the Harley Street fertility specialist Rajat Goswamy quickly revealed that she was suffering from severe endo-metriosis - tissue growth that leads to the scarring of reproductive organs and can cause infertility. At last, a diagnosis. Having had the condition treated with laser surgery a fortnight ago, she plans to try again to get pregnant naturally, returning to IVF if necessary.

The treatment may work; or she may have to confront the fact that she will never give birth. Her story is unfinished, though she admits "people always want a happy ending". Her decision to reveal her experiences before such an ending is welcomed by infertility support groups. Sheena Young of Child, the national infertility support network, says: "What she has done is extremely valuable. We want to see infertility normalised, not seen as something abnormal, and to have a celebrity speak about this is worth its weight in gold."

Hyde, laughing her strong laugh, says that she once wanted "a big family - I wanted the bloody Waltons". Now, though, she feels she would be fortunate to have one. "I always say having a child is a privilege, not a right. If I have one I will consider myself the luckiest woman in the world."

· 24-hour helpline for Child, the national infertility support network: 01424 732361.